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IT'S ALL IN THE DAY'S 
WORK 



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IT'S ALL IN THE DAY'S 
WORK 



BY 

HENRY CHURCHILL KING 

PRESIDENT OF OBERLIN COLLEGE 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1916 

All rights restrved 



Copyright, 1916, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1916. 




NOV 16 1916 



J. 8. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



©CI. A 4 45 654 



IT'S ALL IN THE DAY'S 
WORK 



It's All In the Day's 
Work 



It is not easy to be certain of the 
precise origin and meaning of the 
saying in which my theme is stated. 
The dictionaries take it as essen- 
tially synonymous with "It comes 
in the course of business/' Kipling 
apparently uses it, in his well-known 
book, as the title of a collection of 
stories, to show the very varied 
things that may come in the course 
of the day to different kinds of men. 
I am using the saying, myself, in 



It's All In the Day's Work 

what I suppose is practically its 
dictionary meaning, as giving a 
point of view from which one may 
well think of the work of his life — 
a point of view that aims not to 
make too much of any single inci- 
dent in the day's work ; that takes 
what comes, to face it thoughtfully 
and energetically, and turns with 
undiminished energy to the next 
thing. It is the point of view of 
the modest man who deprecates 
that any one should make overmuch 
of the difficulties or suffering that 
he has had to face, or of heroism 
that he has shown, or of achieve- 
ments he has accomplished. He 
2 



It's All In the Day's Work 

has learned how many are "the 
things no fellow can do/' and, 
therefore, from hour to hour and 
from day to day, would do as a 
matter of course, just what befits 
a man, and under either praise or 
commiseration is inclined quite 
honestly to say, "Oh, it's all in the 
day's work." 

This point of view may seem to 
have a touch of modern grayness in 
it, as over against the high colors of 
antiquity or of the chivalry of the 
middle ages. To men of certain 
temperaments it may even seem to 
be the mood of the disillusioned, 
that know well that they must not 
3 



It's All In the Day's Work 

anticipate striking achievements for 
themselves or for others. But one 
may not forget, at the same time, 
that no age has had so keen a vision 
as ours of the large possibilities in 
common men and common ways. 
It is characteristic of our time, that 
one great popular magazine should 
be conducting a standing depart- 
ment under the caption, "In- 
teresting People/' and that the 
subjects of the sketches should be 
drawn from every walk of life. 

The real question, then, which I 
wish to raise is this : How are we to 
think of our lives as we look for- 
ward to them ? What mood are we 
4 



It's All In the Day's Work 

to carry into them ? In what spirit 
are we to take life and to face its 
vicissitudes ? For a man's point of 
view and his mood toward life have, 
after all, everything to do with 
what his life is to mean to himself 
and to other men. And my 
thought is, that this every-day 
saying, "It's all in the day's work/' 
may well indicate both mood and 
point of view. 

Five suggestions it may be said to 
contain : The true view of life is not 
the ascetic view ; nor the attitude of 
self-pity ; nor the point of view of 
medieval chivalry, with its faith in 
the aristocracy of certain events ; 
5 



It's All In the Days Work 

nor a like faith in the aristocracy of 
persons, even in attempted service ; 
but the straightforward taking on, 
with cheer and courage, of whatever 
is involved in the goal one has set 
himself. These five suggestions 
seem to me to be expressed in 
classic form in five passages of 
Scripture, which taken together 
may be said to reflect the true view 
of one's life and work: "I have 
learned, in whatsoever state I am, 
therein to be content" ; "Take thy 
part in suffering hardship as a good 
soldier of Christ Jesus " ; "I there- 
fore so run, as not uncertainly" ; 
"Not to think of himself more 
6 



It's All In the Day's Work 

highly than he ought to think, but 
so to think as to think soberly, 
according as God hath dealt to 
each man a measure of faith" ; 
"Forgetting the things which are 
behind, and stretching forward to 
the things which are before, I press 
on toward the goal." 



7 



I 

First of all, then, I suppose it 
may be confidently said that the 
true view of life is not the ascetic 
view. 

The true man is not to seek pain 
for pain's sake, as though it had some 
good in itself ; and he is not to 
regard the body as evil per se y but 
as having rather its own proper 
place and function and .good. He 
is not to belong to those ardent but 
mistaken souls that seek martyr- 
dom, even in a good cause. And 
he will still less lay stress on the 
8 



It's All In the Day's Work 

sufferings that he has had to face 
in the path of duty. He sees no 
virtue in trying to make his work 
harder than necessary ; but he does 
absolutely insist that his work shall 
be honest work, and the best of 
which he is capable. And he is not 
even willing to take a merely Stoic 
attitude, that simply stands life's 
hard experiences and hardens under 
them. He exhorts his soul, rather, 
in the language of the old hymn, to 
"put a cheerful courage on." He 
does not deny pain nor suffering, 
nor their possible ministry of good. 
He does not deny the temptations 
of the body. He knows well that 
9 



It's All In the Day's Work 

experiences may come to a man that 
it will take all his fortitude to en- 
dure. He has no doubt that there 
may even come an hour when a 
man simply cannot be a true man 
and turn away from martyrdom for 
the cause in which he is enlisted. 
Nevertheless, the point of view of 
the Christian man is not to be that 
either of the ascetic, who believes 
that deliverance comes by abuse of 
the body or by seeking suffering, 
or of the mere Stoic, who would 
harden himself against all that life 
can bring. He essays a more diffi- 
cult task than either ascetic or 
Stoic ; he means to retain his 
10 



It's All In the Days Work 

sensitiveness of soul, his capacity 
for joy and suffering, and yet to 
keep his courage. 

No one has stated better than 
Paul this paradoxical attitude of 
the true man. "I have learned, in 
whatsoever state I am, therein to be 
content. I know how to be abased, 
and I know also how to abound ; in 
everything and in all things have I 
learned the secret both to be filled 
and to be hungry, both to abound 
and to be in want/' Here is no 
lack of sensitiveness, and here is 
no perverse choice of abasement 
and hunger, but the cheerful cour- 
age of a true child of God, who 
ii 



It's All In the Day's Work 

believes that God has intrusted to 
him great and significant work, in 
the wake of which no doubt will be 
found many contrasted experiences, 
but who believes that these, 
nevertheless, cannot affect the 
significance of the work. 



12 



II 



But if the point of view of the 
true man is not, on the one hand, 
ascetic or Stoic, still less is it, on 
the other hand, the attitude of 
whimpering self-pity. 

The true man may not allow 
himself to become a soured or sulky 
or spoiled or embittered soul. He 
must learn to detest the spirit of 
constant complaint and the feeble- 
ness of will and character that is 
unwilling to stand anything of hard- 
ship. More than work, more than 
hardship, more than the severest 
13 



It's All In the Day's Work 

discipline, he fears a dwindling self. 
It is this, not the ascetic spirit, that 
makes him fear "the easy job," 
"the soft place." For to be con- 
tented with any lot in life that does 
not task one's powers and demand 
growth, is to insure life's worst calam- 
ity, the dwindling self. An idle, 
selfish, self-indulgent, leisure class 
is a menace not only to itself but 
to the whole community of which it 
is a part. This is a peril that 
peculiarly besets just now a con- 
siderable proportion of American 
women. And the peril is all the 
greater because this class stands 
side by side with another group of 
I 4 



i 



It's All In the Day's Work 

American women who are almost 
constantly overworked. A clothes- 
horse, an idler, a complainer, is not 
an inspiring sight for any creature. 

Just because the Christian point 
of view is not the ascetic point of 
view, one must say with Jeremy 
Taylor: "He that hath so many 
causes of joy, and so great, is very 
much in love with sorrow and peev- 
ishness, who loses all these pleas- 
ures, and chooses to sit down upon 
his little handful of thorns." And 
as to the thorns themselves, one 
does not choose thorns for their 
own sake, and yet Paul discovered 
that there were two ways in which 
1 S 



It's All In the Day's Work 

the disadvantage of the thorn might 
be met : either by having it re- 
moved, or by having greater grace 
to bear it. And he believed that 
he had discovered that many a time 
what we need is not the removal 
of the difficulty, but the courageous 
facing of it. In the background of 
our minds, at the very time that 
we are praying that our lot may be 
made easy, there may be the dis- 
comfiting feeling that if our prayer 
were granted we should have to take 
the answer along with diminished 
self-respect. The words of Phillips 
Brooks upon this point have become 
familiar, because they answer so 
16 



It's All In the Day's Work 

truthfully to the perception of many 
an honest man : "0 do not pray for 
easy lives ! Pray to be stronger 
men ! Do not pray for tasks equal 
to your powers. Pray for powers 
equal to your tasks ! Then the 
doing of your work shall be no 
miracle. But you shall be a 
miracle. " 

And the whimperer and the com- 
plainer not only insures for himself 
a dwindling self, but he is taking 
one of the surest roads a man can 
take, to the spoiling of all the pres- 
ent, both for himself and for all 
those whose lives are touched by his. 
He deliberately adds himself to the 
c 17 



It's All In the Day's Work 

forces that sap the energies of life ; 
that unfit men for any work worth 
doing, and that unfit them not less 
for any real joy in life. Under 
better economic conditions and 
under a truer psychology men have 
learned that idleness and ease are 
not the natural choice of true men, 
but activity and heroic achievement. 
They have learned that no small 
part of the very zest of life is to 
be found in the conflict with diffi- 
culties. Men set themselves, in- 
deed, unnecessarily many hard 
tasks, not for the abuse of the body, 
but for the joy of the achievement. 
Placed, therefore, in the midst of 
18 



It's All In the Day's Work 

an imperfect, developing world, and 
among imperfect, developing men, 
and with a nature that demands 
work that will task its powers, the 
true man knows that there cannot 
fail to be plenty of what men call 
hardship from which he may not 
and would not excuse himself, and 
he takes to his own soul, therefore, 
the old but significant exhortation, 
as the marginal reading runs : 
"Take thy part in suffering hard- 
ship as a good soldier of Christ 
Jesus." He knows that he ought 
to have his share in the strenuous 
and difficult and disagreeable work 
of the world that must be done, 
19 



It's All In the Day's Work 

and he does not mean cowardly to 
shirk his part. He knows that a 
military campaign is no holiday 
excursion, and he does not ask to 
be excused from what properly be- 
longs to his work as a good soldier. 
Professor James once suggested, in 
discussing possible moral substitutes 
for war, that men probably had not 
yet waked up to the fact that the 
more difficult and disagreeable tasks 
of the daily life were confined too 
narrowly to a single class, and that 
too many of us were shirking every- 
thing that we thought of as drudg- 
ery. 

And however hard our lot may 
20 



It's All In the Day's Work 

seem, we certainly cannot improve 
it by whining, nor get more out of 
life by permitting ourselves the em- 
bittered spirit. That is final de- 
feat. It is no denial of the facts 
that is asked for ; it is no childish 
pretending that bitter things are 
sweet ; it is no assertion that all 
lives are equal in hardship, though 
the differences are probably less 
than, judging from the surface of 
things, we are likely to think. It 
is even true that there may come to 
one, what he naturally regards as a 
succession of peculiarly bitter and 
unjust experiences. Nevertheless, 
it is out of circumstances like these 

21 



It's All In the Day's Work 

that some of the choicest spirits 
and some of the world's best work 
have come. And in any case, there 
is just one mood in which an experi- 
ence, however hard, may be safely 
faced : "Take thy part in suffering 
hardship as a good soldier of Christ 
Jesus." 



22 



Ill 



But though a man is to fight a 
good fight, and to take his part in 
suffering hardship as a good soldier, 
his attitude toward life, neverthe- 
less, is in the third place, not to be 
that of medieval romance and chivalry, 
as though the meaning and value of 
life attached only to certain decora- 
tive and conventionally romantic 
scenes and events and careers that 
are far away from the prose of com- 
mon life. 

It is a part of the progress of de- 
23 



It's All In the Day's Work 

mocracy that it tends to deny, not 
only the aristocracy of persons, but 
also the aristocracy of events and 
careers, and glories in the signifi- 
cance of the commonplace. Democ- 
racy is not willing any longer to 
believe that it is only knights and 
pirates and warriors whose careers 
offer the elements of romance. It 
is quite certain that heroics and 
trumpets and the fife and the drum 
and all the fuss and feathers of 
military glamour are not requisite 
to the significant event. It may 
feel the fatal fascination of these 
things, and protest against it with 
Richard le Gallienne : 
24 



It's All In the Day's Work 



"War 
I abhor; 

And yet how sweet 
The sound along the marching street 
Of drum and fife, and I forget 
Broken old mothers, and the whole 
Dark butchering without a soul. 

"Without a soul — save this bright treat 
Of heady music, sweet as hell ; 

And even my peace-abiding feet 

Go marching with the marching street, 

For yonder goes the fife, 

And what care I for human Life ; 

The tears fill my astonished eyes, 
And my full heart is like to break, 

And yet it is embannered lies, 
A dream those drummers make. 

"Oh, it is wickedness to clothe 

Yon hideous, grinning thing that stalks 
Hidden in music, like a queen 

That in a garden of glory walks, 

25 



It's All In the Day's Work 

Till good men love the things they loathe; 
Art, thou hast many infamies, 
But not an infamy like this." 

Still, Democracy is certain that it 
is not the trappings of the scene or 
event that bring meaning and value 
into it, but the content, — the spirit 
and the aim there shown. This was 
the lesson that Sir Launfal learned 
when he returned, hopeless and de- 
feated, from his years of search for 
the Holy Grail, to find at the very 
gates of the castle whence he had 
gone out, the Christ in the guise of 
the beggar to whom he had cast a 
careless coin as he set out on his 
romantic quest. And Eggleston's 
26 



It's All In the Day's Work 

circuit-riding minister was sure 
that, even if the end of the world 
were at hand, it could find him no 
better employed than riding quietly 
on to meet his next appointment. 
There is no aristocracy of events. 

We are coming to believe that it 
is the very business of the poet and 
the artist to help us see and keep 
the values in the common things ; 
that he alone can be poet or artist 
for whom the glorious vision has not 
faded into the light of common day. 
It is a wholesome tendency, thus, 
that leads so many modern writers 
of fiction to uncover for us ideals, 
none the less real because they 
27 



It's All In the Day's Work 

appear in so strange disguise, and 
that sees in the most unpromising 
surroundings and in the commonest 
tasks and scenes opportunities for 
what men have called the romantic. 
It is the superficial and unimagina- 
tive soul that can see the ideal only 
when it is duly labeled and con- 
ventionally garbed. It is against 
this whole habitual tendency of 
mankind that Kipling justly pro- 
tests in his insistence on the daily 
presence of true romance : 

" Robed, crowned and throned, he wove his 
spell, 

Where heart-blood beat or hearth-smoke 
curled, 

28 



It's All In the Day's Work 



With unconsidered miracle, 
Hedged a backward-gazing world ; 
Then taught his chosen bard to say : 
'The King was with us yesterday.'" 

But just as the denial of the aris- 
tocracy of persons does not mean 
that all persons are of equal im- 
portance, but rather that every one 
is of priceless significance, so the 
denial of the aristocracy of events 
and places and careers does not 
mean that all are to be put on a 
dead level, but rather that in any 
one, a man's spirit may be shown, 
and that, therefore, every day, as 
Emerson says, is a doomsday. 

Nor can we pick out the impor- 
29 



It's All In the Day's Work 

tant event or place or career by any 
external test. We do not know 
which, in the outcome, are to prove 
most significant. We cannot fore- 
cast the unconscious moment when 
we shall be weighed in the balances ; 
we cannot anticipate the moment 
of crisis. The history both of the 
individual and of the world declines 
to be divided into dramatic epochs 
by the ringing down of the curtain 
or the shifting of the scenes. The 
great events, as they later prove 
themselves, still refuse to sound a 
trumpet before them. As scientific 
investigation cannot safely decide 
beforehand what facts or truths are 
30 ■ 



It's All In the Day's Work 

to prove most important, but must 
search impartially for the whole 
truth, and as democracy cannot 
safely overlook the value of any 
human soul, so the man who means 
manfully to face his work may not 
lightly estimate any least bit of it, 
but is to be sure that in every por- 
tion he may prove himself a man, 
and that that portion, however com- 
monplace it seems, is thereby glori- 
fied. Any hour in which a man has 
been utterly true is an hour of 
glory, however gray and dull its 
garb. 

"It is glory enough to have shouted the 
name 

31 



It's All In the Day's Work 

Of the living God in the teeth of an army 
of foes ; 

To have thrown all prudence and fore- 
thought away 

And for once to have followed the call of 
the soul 

Out into the danger of darkness, of ruin 
and death. 

To have counseled with right, not success, 

for once, 
Is glory enough for one day." 

It is out of such a view-point 
that there has come the new con- 
ception of the callings of men. 
Religion has always known how to 
exalt a man's work by the very 
conception of it as a calling of 
God. Milton's often quoted line, 
"They also serve who only stand 
32 



It's All In the Day's Work 

and wait/' has a significant context 
not always regarded : 

"God doth not need 
Either man's work or his own gifts; who 
best 

Bear his mild yoke they serve him best; 
his state 

Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed 
And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; 
They also serve who only stand and wait." 

The essential thing, that is, is not 
the particular kind of work, but that 
the work is God-given, and that a 
man is faithful in it ; not the size of 
the task, but the character shown 
in the task. 

And to this older conception of 
one's calling there has been added, 
33 



It's All In the Day's Work 

in these later days, a new emphasis 
on Christ's thought of service to 
men, as the other great element 
in the dignity of a man's work. 
Places and careers may differ 
greatly in their conspicuousness and 
their outward glamour, but these are 
no measure of the service that may 
be rendered in them. And the same 
kind of fidelity unto the uttermost 
that the world has always asked 
from soldiers, it has long asked 
from captains of vessels, and is 
asking from locomotive engineers. 
It is coming to see that it must 
apply no less a standard to every 
other calling. And the physician 
34 



It's All In the Day's Work 

and the scientific investigator are 
already measuring up to this stand- 
ard. For science and medicine 
have their martyrs as well as reli- 
gion ; nor these alone. 

'"Twas said: 'When roll of drum and 
battle's roar 
Shall cease upon the earth, O, then no 
more 

"'The deed, — the race — of heroes in the 
land/ 

But scarce that word was breathed when 
one small hand 

"Lifted victorious o'er a giant wrong 
That had its victims crusht through ages 
long; 

"Some woman set her pale and quivering 
face 

Firm as a rock against a man's disgrace; 

35 



It's All In the Day's Work 

"A little child suffered in silence lest 
His savage pain should wound a mother's 
breast ; 

"Some quiet scholar flung his gauntlet 
down 

And risked in Truth's great name, the 
synod's frown ; 

"A civic hero, in the calm realm of laws, 
Did that which suddenly drew a world's 
applause ; 

"And one to the pest his lithe young body 
gave 

That he a thousand thousand lives might 
save." 

Thus to deny the favored aristoc- 
racy of any place or event or career, 
thus to affirm the possible glory of 
every hour and every place and 
every event, is to remember that 

3 6 



It's All In the Day's Work 

"it's all in the day's work." 
" Even so run ; that ye may attain." 
Has any one ever put more pointedly 
than Paul this determination to make 
every stroke count? "I therefore 
so run, as not uncertainly ; so fight 
I, as not beating the air." 



37 



IV 



But when a man has determined 
to make his life one of service to 
his fellow men, and to give himself 
with all earnestness to that service, 
there is involved in this very deter- 
mination a subtle temptation — the 
temptation of the favored man, with 
earnest and benevolent aims, who 
finds it easy to assume superiority, 
and drifts into an unconscious 
pharisaism of intellectual and 
spiritual pride — one of the pecul- 
iar perils of the college man. 

Once more, then, when one says, 

38 



It's All In the Day's Work 

"It's all in the day's work/' he is to 
make sure that that does not mean 
the assumption of the aristocratic 
point of view in the service ren- 
dered. Readers of Tolstoy will re- 
member how vehement is his pro- 
test at this point ; how almost 
scornfully he would sweep away 
the attempted benevolence of the 
favored classes in their endeavors to 
help an uneducated peasant class ; 
how certain he is that it is highly 
probable that those who feel so 
competent to help, are themselves 
less and have therefore less to give 
than those they desire to aid ; and 
how certain he is, too, that they 
39 



It's All In the Day's Work 

give themselves less to others than 
these others give, whom they would 
help. This false idea of service 
seems to Tolstoy to lie "at the 
base of all the crimes which are 
being daily committed. I refer," 
he says, in a letter to a friend who 
has sent him a play for criticism of 
its ethical tone, "to the opinion 
that men, provided or not provided 
with diplomas, as narrow-minded as 
they are uncultivated, but possess- 
ing great assurance, conclude, one 
knows not why, that since they are 
so intelligent and worthy, they need 
not try to govern themselves, but 
that their vocation and sacred duty 
40 



It's All In the Day's Work 

is to enlighten, organize, and direct 
the lives of others. Some of them 
would accomplish this with the aid 
of the old government, others with 
that of the new one, while still 
others, like your Peter, would bring 
this about by offering this ' ignorant 
and stupid people/ this same 
people, which, by its labor, feeds 
these good-for-nothings, the grand 
truths of Christianity which they 
imagine themselves overflowing 
with." "The condition sine qua 
non of all good and all useful 
activity is humility. As soon as 
humility is lacking good becomes 
evil. The highest virtue is love ; 
4i 



It's All In the Day's Work 

but love without humility, haughty 
love, is the negation of love." 
" To-day the disease seems to affect 
everybody. Boys and girls in the 
high school do not think a moment 
about the evil that is in them and 
how to make themselves worthy 
citizens. Their sole care is to know 
how best to educate the people." 

One suspects in Tolstoy's vehe- 
mence a disproportionate emphasis, 
— forgetting the indispensable need 
of fellowship among all, — and yet 
he warns, I cannot doubt, of a real 
and serious danger, and would bring 
us to a truer insight into universal 
human values — the insight to 
42 



* 



It's All In the Day's Work 

which Professor James would per- 
suade us in his essay on "A Certain 
Blindness in Human Beings"; the 
insight of which one catches a 
glimpse in O. Henry's title, "The 
Four Million/' rather than "The 
Four Hundred." Let a man be 
sure that on every side of him exist 
ideals and values and worth quite 
unsuspected, and feel, as Professor 
James says, "how soaked and shot- 
through life is with values and 
meanings which we fail to realize 
because of our external and in- 
sensible point of view." Let a man, 
therefore, first of all, be utterly true 
to the trust of his own moral life ; 
43 



It's All In the Day's Work 

let him make certain that his own 
inner spirit is of such a quality that 
its even unconscious contagion can- 
not help being life-giving, and to 
that end let him be stern in his 
own self-discipline. Let him, in the 
second place, be ready to see the 
best in the other man, and eager to 
learn from him — willing to receive 
as well as to give, to learn as well 
as to teach ; — and this some tem- 
peraments find the more difficult 
task of the two, essential though it be. 
And then let him render in deep 
humility such service as God gives 
him power to do. The first Beati- 
tude is the Beatitude of the humble 
44 



It's All In the Day's Work 

spirit, for this is the first condition, 
not only of one's own growth, but 
of all really fruitful service. Let a 
man, then, not "think of himself 
more highly than he ought to think, 
but so to think as to think soberly, 
according as God hath dealt to 
each man a measure of faith." One 
is not to be an aristocrat in his work. 



45 



V 

But that a man should say, "It's 
all in the day's work," has a still 
further vital bearing on his outlook 
on life. So saying, one should mean 
that he takes all that comes, pleasant 
or painful, bitter or sweet, as simply 
involved in the goal he has set him- 
self, in the work assigned, in the 
trust assumed, in the ideal cher- 
ished, in the kind of man he pur- 
poses to be. He has chosen his 
goal, and whatever is necessary to 
that goal he takes as simple matter 
of course. 

He finds Paul once again ex- 

4 6 



It's All In the Day's Work 

pressing, with exactness, his own 
view-point : " I count not myself 
to have laid hold : but one thing I 
do, forgetting the things which are 
behind, and stretching forward to 
the things which are before, I press 
on toward the goal." One's suffer- 
ings and sacrifices appear in a differ- 
ent light when one looks at them as 
simply involved in the goal that he 
himself has chosen. Though the 
point of view is neither that of the 
medieval knight nor that of the 
modern aristocrat, it is still not a 
dull and hopeless drudgery to which 
a man is doomed. The goal illu- 
mines all the course toward it, 
47 



It's All In the Day's Work 

The man who has seriously taken 
on the Christian view of his life's 
work knows well that Jesus does 
not promise to any disciple exemp- 
tion from trouble, and he will not 
expect it. He genuinely wants a 
good field of life and work, and of 
such a field he knows that there are 
certain fundamental conditions of 
which he may not complain. He 
accepts, therefore, a realm of law 
with all that it involves, and re- 
joices in it ; he accepts the breadth 
of his own nature ; he accepts the 
inevitable membership of men one 
in another. He takes them all as 
a part of the rules of the game. 

4 8 



It's All In the Day's Work 

For, after all, life is much like a 
game, and it is "the checkered game 
of life" that we all have to play. 
Life is more than life's prizes. The 
team that has played squarely and 
cleanly, and with every faculty alert, 
the best game that it was in them 
to play, may go off the field with 
thorough self-respect, though de- 
feated. And the team that has 
played a dirty game, or in any way 
won unworthily, will have to go off 
the field with self-contempt, though 
victorious. General Lee was the de- 
feated commander-in-chief of a de- 
feated cause, but to have lived such 
a life as he lived, and to have won 
E 49 



It's All In the Day's Work 

the honor of foe as well as friend, 
was no defeat. It is no small part, 
indeed, of life, to have learned to be 
in the true sense a good sportsman ; 
to have learned to be a good and not 
a poor loser ; to have learned to be 
a generous winner. Shall a man ask 
less from himself on the field of life 
than on the baseball diamond or 
the football field ? Is he to find it 
impossible to say in life what he 
found grace to say in the game : 
You deserved your victory and 
made a splendid fight ; or, on the 
other hand, Hard luck, old fellow, 
better luck next time ? It means 
very much for a man's life and work 
So 



It's All In the Day's Work 

that he should be neither soured nor 
glum nor mean nor petty ; that he 
should get thoroughly out of him 
jealousy and envy, and that he 
should get grace to do what is even 
more difficult than to "weep with 
those that weep/' namely, to "re- 
joice with those that do rejoice. " 
And, fortunately, in life's truest 
successes there is no rivalry of claim. 
One's victory in the highest not only 
means no other man's defeat, but 
means, rather, his more certain vic- 
tory. For achievement in char- 
acter and in loving service is open 
to every soul. 

And just as it is helpful some- 
Si 



It's All In the Day's Work 

times to look at life from the point 
of view of the game, so also help 
may come when we view it as an 
adventure, and see that every man 
who sets out on an adventure ac- 
cepts willingly all the risks involved ; 
they are anticipated and taken as a 
matter of course, as, once again, 
involved in the goal that he has 
set himself. The hunter or dis- 
coverer or explorer, the pioneer, 
the scientific investigator, know well 
from the beginning the risks they 
may have to run. They know that 
there is likely to be much of hard- 
ship on the way, and they have 
faced it beforehand. None of these 
52 



It's All In the Day's Work 

adventures have been forced upon 
them ; they have voluntarily taken 
up some great challenge that Nature 
has flung at their feet, and they 
do not blink the perils involved. 
Think of Scott and his company at 
the South pole. They recognize 
even that life itself may be the price 
required, but they press none the 
less toward the goal, bearing with 
fortitude what comes, grimly fight- 
ing what must be fought, calling 
in their sense of humor by the way, 
and paying, if they must, the price 
of life. It is in a spirit much like 
this that the Christian presses 
toward his goal in the adventure 
S3 



It's All In the Day's Work 

of life or in the great adventure of 
death. He finds no small part of 
the zest of life in the difficulties to 
be overcome, in the greatness of 
the goals to be won. And in the 
vision of the goal he does not make 
overmuch of the intervening ex- 
periences. "Forgetting the things 
which are behind, and stretching for- 
ward to the things which are be- 
fore/' he presses on toward the goal. 

It is probably not too much to 
say that even Jesus looked at his 
own death in much this light — as 
simply, as we say, "in the day's 
work, " as necessarily involved in the 
great task he had set himself, in 
54 



It's All In the Day's Work 

the ideal he cherished ; and if so 
involved, then under his faith in 
God and in the omnipotence of 
love, as not merely an obstacle to 
be overcome in the attainment of 
his goal, but as certain to count 
toward that attainment. "He 
steadfastly set his face to go up to 
Jerusalem/' in clear anticipation of 
the cross. Of his life, he could say : 
"I lay it down of myself/' 

And if the game and the adven- 
ture have help to give for one's 
mood in life, the point of view of 
the artist or of the expert worker 
has no less help. Both set before 
them the goal of high achievement, 
55 



It's All In the Day's Work 

of an ideal embodiment of the ideal 
they cherish. And they know the 
cost involved. They understand 
the months of steady toil and the 
monotonous drudgery that must in- 
tervene before the satisfying work 
of art or the scientific achievement 
they seek can become a fact, and 
they grudge not one step of the way. 
The goal is worth its cost, and they 
do not grumble at the cost. Shall 
the Christian man or woman who 
seeks still more perfectly such ideal 
embodiment of the ideal, chafe and 
complain at the cost of his still 
greater achievement ? He, too, is 
to remember his goal and to take 
56 



It's All In the Day's Work 

all else as incidental to that goal. 
When he chose his goal he chose 
with full purpose of heart all that 
was necessary to it. 

Moreover, it is always impossible 
to separate a man's work from the 
man himself. And the cost of 
achievement in work involves, 
therefore, at every step a like cost 
in the discipline of the man. That 
we ourselves may become the larger 
men and women we ought to be- 
come, there must be the steady 
calling out of "our too reluctant 
wills." The discipline of the 
struggle, the true man would not 
spare. For he knows how flabby 
57 



It's All In the Day's Work 

often is both his intellectual and 
his moral fiber, and he does not 
mean to shirk the discipline that 
will make firm and strong the in- 
most fiber of his life. Let no man 
forget his peril at this point. It is 
a wholesome good sense, after all, 
that exhorts a man to stop his com- 
plaining and to "take his medicine/' 
And the true man expects no 
early completion of his task. He 
knows that both man's nature and 
the Christian ideal call him to end- 
less growth. He knows that the 
law of his life must be "grace upon 
grace that every ideal attained 
is to become for him only the van- 

58 



It's All In the Day's Work 

tage ground whence may be seen a 
still higher ideal. And once more 
he presses toward the goal. And 
at every stage he knows well that 
he faces a double task : the task of 
rising above his circumstances and 
not being ruled by them — of being 
" happy in his lot" ; and the task of 
taking account of the whole breadth 
of his nature and of realizing, there- 
fore, that he is made on too broad 
a plan to make it possible for him to 
get enjoyment at the sacrifice of 
self-respect and of the mood of 
self-mastery. 

In the vision of the great goals 
of life, therefore, happiness in- 
59 



It's All In the Day's Work 

evitably takes on a different aspect, 
and it is not strange that one of the 
recent Gifford lecturers closed his 
series of lectures by quoting the 
often cited passage from the Epi- 
logue to George Eliot's " Romola" : 
"We can only have the highest 
happiness, such as goes along with 
being a great man, by having wide 
thoughts and much feeling for the 
rest of the world as well as for our- 
selves ; and this sort of happiness 
often brings so much pain with it 
that we can only tell it from pain 
by its being what we should choose 
before everything else, because our 
souls see it is good." The true 
60 



It's All In the Day's Work 

man, that is, cannot give up his 
goal. He cannot surrender the 
ideal cherished. He would not 
fail in the task assumed or deny 
the largeness of his nature, and he 
pays with gladness, therefore, the 
price of attainment. He would 
look clear through to the end and 
actualize the paradox of Christ : 
"Except a grain of wheat fall into 
the earth and die, it abideth by 
itself alone, but if it die, it beareth 
much fruit/' 

It is a part of the truth we have 
been considering, to remember the 
immense significance of any day in 
which a man girds himself for his 
61 



It's All In the Day's Work 

task. It is such a day, when a man 
truly adjusts spirit and mood to the 
coming experiences of life, as we have 
been seeking to do, in these pages. 

In the calmness of high and un- 
swerving purpose, then, and yet in 
no hard ascetic or Stoic mood, may 
we be given power to say, with 
cheerful courage as the years go 
on, "I have learned, in whatsoever 
state I am, therein to be content. 
I know how to be abased, and I 
know also how to abound ; in 
everything and in all things have 
I learned the secret both to be filled 
and to be hungry, both to abound 
and to be in want." 

62 



It's All In the Day's Work 

Set free, too, from self-pity and 
the spirit of complaint, we are to 
put steel into our souls with the 
old words, "Take thy part in suffer- 
ing hardship as a good soldier of 
Christ Jesus. 99 

Certain, also, that any hour, any 
place, any career may hold, though 
deeply disguised, its own glory, we 
are to say again, "I therefore so 
run, as not uncertainly; so fight I, 
as not beating the air/' There is 
no aristocracy of events. 

With earnest desire, moreover, to 
serve in work worth doing, and with 
self-respect as one member of the 
body of Christ, yet with heart-felt 

6 3 



It's All In the Day's Work 

humility in view both of the much 
that we must receive from the other 
members of the body and of the 
divine ideal for ourselves, may we 
each be given grace to do our work, 
not thinking of ourselves more 
highly than we ought to think, but 
so to think as to think soberly, 
according as God hath dealt to 
each man a measure of faith. May 
no mental or moral conceit mar our 
life and defeat even our purposes of 
good. There can be no aristocracy 
in service. 

And once more, we are to keep 
the vision of our goal, and take 
with equanimity whatever that goal 

6 4 



It's All In the Day's Work 

involves. We are to have the spirit 
of a good sportsman ; and not 
chafe under the rules of the game. 
We are to be good losers and 
generous winners. We are in the 
midst of the adventure of life. We 
are not to resent the risks of that 
adventure. We are to be willing 
to pay the price of high attainment 
and of an endless self-discipline. 
For we cannot choose with satis- 
faction a selfish happiness. We are 
to forget the things that are behind 
and press toward the goal. 

There is almost an epitome of 
what I have been trying to say in 
an incident which one of Norman 
f 65 



It's All In the Day's Work 

Duncan's characters tells of his 
childhood and of his mother : 

"She took me in her lap. 

"'Look into your mother's eyes, lad/ she 
said, 'and say after me this: "My 
mother" ' — 

" ' My mother/ I repeated, very solemnly. 

"'Looked upon my heart' — 

"'Looked upon my heart/ said I. 

"'And found it brave' — 

"'An' found it brave/ 

"'And sweet' — 

"'An' sweet.' 

"'Willing for the day's work* — 
"'Willing for the day's work/ I repeated. 
"'And harboring no shameful hope' — 
"'An' harboring no shameful hope.' 
"Again and again she had me say it, until 
I knew every word by heart. 

"'Ah/ she said at last, 'but you'll forget/ 
'"No, no!' I cried. TU not forget. 

66 



It's All In the Day's Work 



"My mother looked upon my heart," 
I rattled, "an' found it brave and sweet, 
willing for the day's work an' harboring no 
shameful hope." I've not forgot, I've not 
forgot/ 

" ' He'll forget,' she whispered, but not to 
me, 'like all children.' 

" But I have not forgotten — I have not 
forgotten — I have never forgotten — that, 
when I was a child, my mother looked upon 
my heart and found it brave and sweet, 
willing for the day's work and harboringno 
shameful hope." 



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